Prince Harry visits minefield in Angola

The Duke of Sussex donned a bulletproof vest and walked through a minefield near a village in Cuito Cuanavale, southern Angola, on Wednesday, according to the British non-governmental group.

The HALO Trust is the same organization Princess Diana worked with when she toured a former minefield in Huambo in January 1997, seven months before she died in a car accident in Paris.

Angola still has thousands of minefields, remnants of the long armed conflict that ended in 2002, which continue to pose a direct threat to the lives of the population and an obstacle to development.

The HALO Trust, which has operated in Angola since 1994, says at least 60,000 people have been killed or injured by landmines since 2008.

The organization says it has located and removed more than 120,000 mines and 100,000 other explosive devices in Angola, a country it considers a strategic partner.

Despite progress, there are still approximately 975 minefields in Angola, 192 of which are located along the strategic Lobito Corridor.

This is not the first time that Prince Harry of the United Kingdom has visited Angola.

In 2019, the Duke of Sussex visited the former landmine site in Huambo, visited 22 years ago by his mother, Diana of Wales.

In 2013, Harry was in the country and expressed his anger at some countries that had failed in demining operations in Africa.

On Tuesday, Angolan President João Lourenço received the Duke of Sussex to reinforce the HALO Trust's demining efforts, to whom he expressed his intention to fund operations for a further three years.

The announcement was made by the organization's executive director, James Cowan, who communicated Angola's new commitment to funding operations for another three years.

In June, Angola announced that it will request in December, for the third time, for a further five years, an extension of the deadline to rid itself of anti-personnel mines, as required by Article 5 of the Ottawa Convention.

The director-general of the Angolan National Mine Action Agency, Brigadier Leonardo Sapalo, noted that the provinces of Luanda, Icolo e Bengo, Benguela, Huambo, Zaire, Namibe, Cuanza Norte, Uíje and Malanje have reduced contamination and are close to being declared mine-free.

João Lourenço wants the country to be mine-free by 2027 and announced in October that 240 million dollars (207 million euros) will be invested in the demining program over the next two years.

On Tuesday, Ukraine's parliament approved the country's withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention, following in the footsteps of Poland, Finland and the Baltic states, in the face of the threat from Russia, which is not a party to the anti-personnel mine treaty.

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